To attract and maintain customers in today's ever more competitive retail industry, it is important to provide customers with a variety of payment options. One payment option is a merchant or retailer issued private label debit card. While private label debit cards are generally used to pay only the issuing retailer and its affiliates or networks, purchases often qualify for incentives such as discounts and rewards programs, for example. Private label debit cards are also beneficial to retailers as transaction costs are generally less than those of credit card purchases, and transactional information about customers can be readily obtained, especially as compared to cash purchases. Transactional information can be used to develop strategies for attracting new customers and for determining transactional patterns of existing customers.
In light of the above, it is beneficial to retailers for customers to utilize private label debit cards. However, for purposes of efficiency and customer satisfaction, it would be beneficial for retailers to solicit for debit cards only those customers likely to use such debit cards, and also to limit risks to the retailer.